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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143697">Painter Would You Paint My Portrait</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebeccaStevenTaylor/pseuds/RebeccaStevenTaylor'>RebeccaStevenTaylor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Romance, love and art</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:15:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,511</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebeccaStevenTaylor/pseuds/RebeccaStevenTaylor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley has always felt a need to feel himself immortalised in paint - what can Aziraphale do but buy the pictures?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The title comes from a song by Edie Brickell and Steve Martin</p><p>Painter would you paint my portrait<br/>Paint me wearing the finest clothes in town<br/>Make me look like I'm somebody<br/>Make me a little younger than I am now</p><p>…</p><p>Make it a work of art<br/>A real sight to see<br/>Make it a work of art<br/>A real masterpiece<br/>Don't forget my dear companion<br/>Put someone who loves me by my side</p><p>Will you please remember me<br/>Remember me this way<br/>Will you please remember me<br/>I want to be remembered this way</p><p>Painter would you paint my portrait<br/>I want to be remembered this way</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>‘Oy, Aziraphale!’</p><p>Aziraphale paused in his contemplation of the group of women weaving plant fibres together and glanced up. There at the mouth of the cave stood the demon, his sworn enemy and opponent.</p><p>‘Oh, Crawly. What are you doing there?’</p><p>‘Come and look.’</p><p>The demon waved him up and Aziraphale went willingly. The demon may have been his sworn enemy, but he was also the only other immortal being who’s company he actually enjoyed. He always seemed to find the most interesting things. He went up to the cave and peered inside.</p><p>The humans were learning to do the most amazing things. They seemed to have a rudimentary language now. The women out there were working out how to create fabric right in front of his eyes. The next valley over had just grown their first crop of wheat. Now what was happening?</p><p>‘What’s she doing?’ Crawly asked, pointing inside the cave. One of the humans that lived there had dipped their fingers into some paste and was smearing it all over the walls.</p><p>‘I’m not sure,’ Aziraphale said, coming slowly into the cave. He somehow seemed to bring the light with him, so the smeared paste on the wall lit up. He looked at the marks on the wall as the woman glanced up at Crawly, then used her fingers to create swirls of red all round the black figure she had drawn. ‘It’s you!’ Aziraphale said delightedly. ‘She’s created a representation of you. Look, that’s clearly your red hair. Oh, well done. It really is like him.’</p><p>The woman grinned up at him, then took some yellow paste and swirled it around another figure, all in white.</p><p>‘And that must be me. She’s put you and me on the wall!’</p><p>‘Why?’ Crawly said dubiously. He’d learned to be very suspicious of paperwork, and this – recording – of him seemed far too much like paperwork to him. She got up and spoke to him, whispered in his ear for a moment, and then left. Crawly watched her go, his face looking like he’d received a revelation.</p><p>‘What did she say?’ Aziraphale asked.</p><p>‘She said – in her way – she said this way we would always be remembered. No matter what happened to us, everyone for all time would always know we existed, because now there was a picture of us on the wall.’</p><p>‘How extraordinary,’ Aziraphale breathed, looking back at the picture of the two of them on the wall. ‘Here we are, you and me, forever.’</p><p>‘Forever.’ Crawly said strangely. But when Aziraphale turned back to him, he had gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It was Italy. It was the Renaissance. Aziraphale and Crowley were drunk. Crowley was raving about the painter he’d met. These were the happiest times. They had wine and food, they had good company (each, privately, agreed that the other’s company was the best) and there was lots going on around them to talk about. These hot afternoons segueing into lazy evenings spent talking were the highlights of two lives that had become very busy lately. What with corrupt popes and new religious leaders popping up all over the place, a demon and an angel hardly had a moment to themselves. But today was not about business. Today, Crowley really, really wanted to tell Aziraphale about his new friend.</p><p>‘Not just a painter, though, old Leo.’</p><p>‘What do you mean?’ Aziraphale asked, concentrating very hard on pouring wine into his glass.</p><p>‘He thinks,’ Crowley said, tapping his head forcefully. ‘About things. ’Bout blood and muscles and machines to go underwater and up in the air and stuff.’</p><p>‘He thinks?’ Aziraphale said.</p><p>‘Yeah. As well as being a bloody amazing painter. His brain – his brain right – his brain must be massive. Bigger – bigger than – bigger than….what’s got a big brain?’</p><p>‘Whales?’</p><p>‘Can’t be whales cos then it wouldn’t fit in his head. But – I know! I know, you’re going to meet him. Right now. Right this second.’</p><p>Crowley dragged Aziraphale up from the table as Aziraphale poured a pile of coins onto it.</p><p>‘We can’t just drop in on him,’ Aziraphale said. ‘He might be busy.’</p><p>‘Can. Cos he’s a friend – and I know! Brilliant idea! Brilliant!’</p><p>‘What?’</p><p>‘We’ll get our portrait painted.’</p><p>Aziraphale stopped dead in the street, pulling his arm away from Crowley.</p><p>‘We can’t have our picture painted together. People would see it. Your side would see it! Your lot loves art. You’d be seen with me,  you’d get into trouble.’</p><p>‘Separate then. In the same room, painted at the same time, but separate pictures. C’mon, Angel, I’ve seen your face in all those fluffy angels sitting on clouds in chapels. Wouldn’t you like a proper picture of you?’</p><p>‘Well, strictly speaking posing as fluffy angels is part of my job,’ Aziraphale said. ‘But – actually, yes, I would like that. And I would like to meet Mr da Vinci.’</p><p>Which was how, an hour later, a sobered up Aziraphale and Crowley found themselves in an attic, shaking hands with a rather strong man with a rather intense gaze. Crowley chatted as Aziraphale wandered around, reading through scraps of paper (once he had the hang of the mirror handwriting) and stunned by the range of subjects covered – a note on balloons on the edge of a page full of studies of eyes, a design for a flying cart on the back of a sketch of an anatomised man.</p><p>‘My friend was right, Mr da Vinci,’ Aziraphale said. ‘You really have the most extraordinary mind.’</p><p>‘A gift from God,’ the man said, almost by rote. In these times, it was wise to attribute skill to God, not humanity.</p><p>‘I rather doubt it,’ Aziraphale said. ‘She finds minds like yours to be rather dangerous.’</p><p>Leo peered at him. Remarks like that bypassed most people. Not Da Vinci, who took careful note.</p><p>‘Painting,’ Crowley said. ‘Would you mind, Leo? Just a couple of chalk studies, like that little sketch you gave me the other day. The two of us, but separate portraits, mind.’</p><p>‘But,’ Aziraphale said, stepping forward. ‘Would you mind giving them the same background? Perhaps linking them in some way? So that one day, possibly, they could be hung together as one picture?’</p><p>He blushed as he said it, and didn’t look at Crowley. Leonardo did though, and this man who saw everything saw the surprise, and the tenderness, and the hopefulness.</p><p>‘I understand the issue entirely,’ he said softly. ‘Please sit at the table, side by side, half turned towards each other. It shall seem like two separate portraits, perhaps alike, but when hung together, it will be obvious they belong together.’</p><p>They sat down in silence.</p><p>‘Angel…’ Crowley said.</p><p>‘I continue to have hope we will be allowed to be friends one day,’ Aziraphale said firmly. ‘As long as you are careful and don’t get yourself in trouble with Hell in the meantime.’</p><p>Leonardo darted forward and placed an apple in Crowley’s hand. Crowley looked up sharply but Leonardo merely smiled innocently. Then he placed a scroll in Aziraphale’s hand.</p><p>‘Now we have the objects that define you as individuals. One more thing is needed.’</p><p>He glanced around the attic and then grabbed a book and placed it on the table.</p><p>‘Please rest your hands on that, one on either side. This will define you as a pair.’</p><p>Aziraphale glanced down at the book.</p><p>‘Ombre e luce,’ he read from the title.</p><p>‘Shadow and light,’ Crowley translated softly. ‘Well, I guess that defines you and me alright, angel. Complete opposites, always fighting each other.’</p><p>‘No,’ Leo said sharply, setting up his easel. ‘The Church is fond of saying that light defeats darkness but artists know differently. They know light and shadow work together to create beauty and wonder, that one cannot exist without the other, that they are a matched pair who must never be separated. Now please hold still while I draw you.’</p><p>Aziraphale always treasured this memory. Sat beside Crowley, the sun pouring in through the skylight, illuminating all the wonderful scribbles stuck all over the wall, being painted by a true genius. Leo talked as he worked, and Crowley talked back, happy and relaxed.</p><p>Once Leo was done, he held Crowley’s portrait out to him, and Aziraphale’s to him – but Aziraphale reached over and took Crowley’s portrait.</p><p>‘I’d like to have yours, if you please, my dear.’</p><p>‘And how would you explain that if Gabriel came knocking?’ Crowley mocked, to cover the sudden surge of emotion inside him.</p><p>‘Identification of the enemy,’ Aziraphale said brightly. ‘Quite vital to be able to show other angels what my opponent looks like, so I shall keep this, if you are amenable?’</p><p>‘Suits me, angel.’ Crowley took the portrait of the angel and put it in his pocket, firmly warning it to stay in pristine condition forever. Aziraphale took the portrait of the demon and wrapped it tenderly in linen and placed it carefully in a bag to keep it safe. His fussiness over it wrenched Crowley’s heart.</p><p>‘There will come a time,’ Leo said to him, in a low voice.</p><p>‘Doubt it, mate,’ Crowley replied. ‘But thanks for the pictures.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Crowley found he rather liked posing for a painting, and he continued to do it, demanding a new portrait in each new style – the formality of a Gainsborough, the sensuousness of a Lely. Aziraphale often posed for pictures himself, but as he wandered around galleries, it was Crowley’s enigmatic face he saw over and over again. He reached out to Aziraphale from a Reynolds canvas, and grinned cheekily from a Caravaggio. He even had the cheek to pose as Satan for an illustrated copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost (Aziraphale treasured that copy, and always kept it open by his desk). Every painter in the world seemed to want to try to capture Crowley’s elusive temptation, but to Aziraphale’s mind, they all failed. None of them lived up to the dazzling original – except perhaps Leo’s painting, and the one done by the woman in the cave long ago.</p>
<p>Of course, both of those paintings were with Aziraphale, but that was a dangerous thought to follow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In late Victorian England, after the Argument, as Crowley slept, Aziraphale found himself outside a gallery, staring at the latest Rossetti – the Sleeping Beauty, a red-haired figure, in a green dress, sleeping, with an apple in her hand.</p>
<p>‘Well, you woke up long enough to pose for that!’ Aziraphale snapped and walked away – then he came back and marched in and demanded that they sell him the painting.</p>
<p>‘It’s rather pricy…’ the young man sitting at the desk said, obviously hoping up to push up the price.</p>
<p>‘Any price,’ Aziraphale replied quickly. The man took it off the wall and wrapped it up for Mr Fell, who was eager to have it right now.</p>
<p>‘I have more Rossetti,’ the young man said, hoping for a further sale to this impetuous and demanding man.</p>
<p>‘No thank you. I find his art rather lurid.’ Aziraphale took the package (it was large but he seemed perfectly capable of carrying it)</p>
<p>‘Then if it’s the model that interests you…’</p>
<p>Aziraphale turned around and looked at the man.</p>
<p>‘I have another – or rather – a drawing of the model’s twin brother, it must be. Alike in every way to The Sleeping Beauty, except clearly a man.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I would like to see that.’</p>
<p>The man kept apologising. It was only a simple line drawing by Elizabeth Siddal, he said – barely trained, not up to their usual standard, they only stocked it as a favour to Ruskin. He held out the tiny picture to Aziraphale.</p>
<p>It was a delicate drawing of Crowley, hat in hand, sat on a chair, slumped forward, staring at the floor. It was a drawing of a man in pain, of unbearable sorrow. Elizabeth Siddal had scribbled across the corner ‘1862, grief.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, this one too,’ Aziraphale said, and his voice cracked with unshed tears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Really, the sixties were so noisy. Music everywhere, scooters, constant protesting. Aziraphale could hardly hear himself think as he walked down Carnaby Street. Soho was quite the place to be these days, and he was having to fight off several developers who wanted to turn his bookshop into a ‘swinging night spot’ whatever that was. However, the story that anyone who tried to threaten Mr Fell into moving disappeared quietly a few days later was spreading, and he was being left alone.</p>
<p>But then the swinging sixties went silent as Aziraphale saw a picture in the window of a gallery. It was a print of a photograph by Anthony Armstrong-Jones – a man in a velvet suit, sunglasses shielding his eyes, stood with his back to the viewer, just a glimpse of his face over his shoulder.</p>
<p>He knew who that was. Aziraphale didn’t even need to see Crowley’s face. He knew the set of his shoulders. He knew the line of his legs. He knew the shape and shadow of every inch of him. He would know him in the Stygian darkness from the merest brush of his hand.</p>
<p>He bought the print.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was no good, really. Aziraphale returned to his bookshop (who had been feeling slightly abandoned for several years) to search, once again, for any trace of Agnes Nutter’s book, while Crowley searched his cupboards for any trace of alcohol.</p><p>‘Warlock might choose the good side,’ Aziraphale said hopefully, from his desk. ‘Well, the side that won’t get us destroyed.’</p><p>‘Just six days before we know. Do you have any Chardonnay?’</p><p>‘Hardly the occasion for Chardonnay, dear.’ Aziraphale thumbed through another catalogue. Fat lot of good that ‘beta max’ prophecy had turned out to be. He’d kicked himself when the eighties came (although he had warned Crowley about buying Betamax)</p><p>‘No. You’re right. A nice heavy red is what we need,’ Crowley said gloomily, searching the kitchen cupboards. ‘We did the best we could, in the end.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ Aziraphale said, sitting back in his chair. ‘One boy against all the armies of hell and heaven. Hardly bears thinking about. I hope we prepared him.’</p><p>‘One boy and us,’ Crowley said. Aziraphale merely looked at him. ‘You’re right. Sod wine. We need the strongest whisky known to man. Where is it?’</p><p>Crowley reached for a cupboard door he’d never seen opened, though Aziraphale called out to him to stop. But once he opened it, there was no whisky. Instead he saw the last thing he ever expected to see in the angel’s bookshop. There they were, hung carefully. Pictures of him. Pictures of Crowley.</p><p>The Da Vinci had pride of place, obviously. But it was surrounded by dozens of others – that delicious Vigee le Brun he’d had painted a week before the Revolution. He danced across a series of Hogarth etchings. He sat alone, smoking, captured by Sargent.</p><p>It shook him. Here, where he ought not to be, where any trace of him could be tracked down by Sandalphon and Gabriel, and Aziraphale punished, was his face, his form, his figure, over and over again. Why would he risk it? Why would it do it?</p><p>‘Angel?’</p><p>Aziraphale was beside him, sighing. He looked into the cupboard (which was less of a cupboard and more of a medium-sized gallery at this point. Time and space could be fluid in the bookshop). He reached out to straighten a slightly crooked Hopper then stood with his hands behind his back, staring at his collection.</p><p>‘You’ve got a lot of pictures of me,’ Crowley said, slightly breathless.</p><p>‘Well, you’ve posed for a lot,’ Aziraphale said.</p><p>That wasn’t really the point Crowley had been aiming for. He wanted to shout out why, and how, and what was going on, but knew himself well enough to know that he would only manage to choke out a random collection of consonants.</p><p>What did this remind of him of? Oh – he knew – those little cupboards some of the devout rich had, filled with religious symbols – a shrine. Was that what this was? A shrine to him?</p><p>Crowley reached out and gently touched the frame of a Gwen John. He’d meant to meet Rodin that day, but Gwen had looked at him and he chose her to paint him instead, while telling her Rodin was a shit and she deserved better. Her painting was in blues and greys, and it reminded him of Aziraphale.</p><p>‘Well, when you look as good as me, you’ve got to get a picture or two,’ Crowley said, aiming for lightness, but Aziraphale neither laughed or scolded.</p><p>‘That’s not why you do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think, my dear, here and now,  almost at the end, we deserve to tell each other the truth?’</p><p>‘Then tell me why I do it. Why I have posed over and over again, for all these artists. You know me so well, tell me why.’</p><p>Aziraphale looked at him, then back at his collection of red-headed, daring, melancholy, breath-taking painted Crowleys.</p><p>‘You’re worried you’ll be gone one day,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You think one day someone – Hell, or Heaven – will come for you and there’ll be nothing left. You wanted to leave a mark. You wanted to blaze across the world and leave a trail in paintings ‘I was here’. These paintings are your memorial, so we don’t forget you.’</p><p>‘But that doesn’t explain why you have them all. Why you have a shrine of me.’</p><p>‘Because if you were gone, I’d want every last piece left of you.’</p><p>Crowley looked at the paintings, and at Aziraphale. His angel was crying, silent tears on his cheeks. He gazed at the paintings, not at the demon beside him, unable to look at the living being.</p><p>‘They’re not really like you,’ he said softly. ‘But they as close as I would be able to get.’</p><p>‘Oh,’ Crowley said softly. No,  this was not a shrine. This was an act of remembrance.  He’d be remembered. He’d be mourned. His memory would burn bright, not because of the pictures, but because of the angel. Crowley would always be alive there. He didn’t need to make a mark in paint. He was seared across the angel’s soul.</p><p>He wished he had realised that before.</p><p>‘You do understand,’ he said.</p><p>‘All too well. I have been afraid I would lose you for a very long time now. I cannot hold onto you – but these –,’ Aziraphale gestured at the pictures. ‘I keep these safe.’</p><p>Crowley really, really wanted to tell Aziraphale he wasn’t going to lose him. That he could give the paintings away. Let them leave a mark on all the other people in the world. Let them stare at the mysterious red-haired enchanter. Aziraphale wouldn’t need to be reminded because Crowley would always be here.</p><p>Was this what Aziraphale had been afraid of all the time? Crowley had been afraid of being forgotten but Aziraphale was afraid of losing Crowley?</p><p>Aziraphale tried to smile a little.</p><p>‘Perhaps I should give you a painting of me.’</p><p>‘I have the Da Vinci, and anyway, I don’t need one,’ Crowley said, closing the door of the cupboard.</p><p>‘Oh?’ Aziraphale sounded hurt.</p><p>‘I will not exist in a world that does not have you in it,’ Crowley said, as simply as if he were just ordering dinner. Then he turned and walked away.</p><p> </p><p>When Aziraphale returned to his bookshop, after it was over, after he had died and Crowley had stopped time and the world was rebuilt anew, he packed up all the paintings and sent them off to various museums around the world.</p><p>‘Getting rid of me, Angel?’ Crowley demanded.</p><p>‘I no longer need memories, darling. I have you, and I won’t lose you.’</p><p>‘Much better to be in a museum anyway. We need to share this,’ Crowley said, gesturing to himself, ‘with the world.’</p><p>‘Hmm. Yes. Besides, this is the only painting we need.’</p><p>Aziraphale hung the Da Vinci painting of Crowley up on the wall, where everyone who walked into the shop could see it. He snapped his fingers and the frame expanded sideways, and was filled by the portrait of Aziraphale. The two portraits were finally one painting, as they were always meant to be.</p><p>‘Looks better than way, angel.’ Crowley said.</p><p>‘Yes,’ Aziraphale, reaching for Crowley in the imperious demanding way he had, a mood that delighted the demon. ‘From now on, my love, we will always be painted together.’</p><p> </p>
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